


Current Events

by storiesfortravellers



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Brief references to loss and grief, Friendship, Gen, Pre-CA2, Veterans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-07 09:54:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1894689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiesfortravellers/pseuds/storiesfortravellers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt: What was going on in Sam's life when Cap was discovered and revived?  How did that news (or other superheroes-are-real/MCU-event related news) affect him as a non-enhanced soldier or civillian?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Current Events

**Author's Note:**

  * For [APgeeksout](https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/gifts).



When Sam heard that Captain America had been found – alive – in the ice, the first thing he felt was pity.

Sam was in his third month of peer counseling, and all that desperate had seeped into his skin pretty good. He didn’t know how to help himself most days, and he was starting to wonder if he was actually doing any good for anyone else either.

And when he came home and popped a dinner in the microwave, turned on the television, and saw the news talking about the return of the legend Captain America, Sam just felt… sorry for him.

The man had lost everything, and didn’t even have his own world to come back to. It was hard enough to survive fallen comrades; Sam couldn’t imagine being forced to survive a fallen century, a whole generation, a whole society, dead or unrecognizable.

For a second, Sam thought, _That poor bastard doesn’t have a chance._

Two years later, when he watched the Battle of New York on television, waiting for the call that never came – the one that told him aliens had moved beyond New York to DC and it was time to gear up – he grinned when he saw Captain America, uniform and all, toss an alien into wall. 

“You’re back, baby,” Sam murmured to no one, and he knew that he was going to show the video at the next meeting, knew that everyone there would feel the same way as he did. Captain America lost everything and still gets out of bed in the morning, still knows the world needs him, still finds a reason to keep going even with all the baggage a soldier carries.

Later, when they meet, Sam never tells Steve any of this. The guy has enough trouble being just a man instead of an icon, and the last thing Sam wants to do is make it worse.

Besides, Sam realizes now that in addition to the honor and the history and the courage and the resilience, there's also, still, the kid from Brooklyn with something to prove in there. If Sam ever told him that once – even once – Sam felt pity for him, that kid from Brooklyn would probably kick his ass.


End file.
